As I took it all in, I kept asking myself…How could any of this be?
We were undergroundin some kind of cavern. I was sure of it. My wolf senses told me the earthy smell was coming from above — not beneath my feet. And rock — a mix of limestone and granite. I could smell it everywhere.
But I could not see it.
All I saw was the gleaming kingdom. So bucolic. If I still had my phone, I could have taken a picture and sold it as a wallpaper image labeled “fantasy kingdom.”
No one would ask where it was. Because no one would believe it was real.
Was it real?
“We’re taking her right over here…"
I didn’t realize I’d stopped dead in my tracks until the Sea King tugged on the blanket and got me moving again. "Wild and I figured it’d be easier to put them up in one of the cottages.”
He led us out through the archway in the direction of the postcard-like village lying just a few yards away, down a gently sloped hill.
The cottages, like the sky, the grass, and the castle, gleamed under the sun. Impossibly vibrant and clean. Unlike the white communitybuildings in St. Ailbe, which looked beaten and weathered within a couple of seasons of their construction, the secret kingdom cottages had a uniform and perfect beauty. They looked as if they had been freshly constructed and painted just a few days ago by the village's inhabitants.
Or maybe by some kind of artificial intelligence? The suspicion sprouted in my head like a weed among a confusion of plants.
“Got any more questions you’d like to put to me?” Sea asked as we walked toward the impossible village with Amanda laid on the blanket. His voice sounded smug as if he had guessed I’d have this reaction to my first sight of the place he called the secret kingdom.
He guessed right. I had so,somany questions, all dying to get out.
But I gritted my jaw and turned to address them to Astrid instead of him. “How is this possible? We’re underground, right? I can smell it. And I feel it in my wolf bones.”
“You’re not wrong exactly,” Astrid answered with a sympathetic look. “We’re in what the Wild Wolves call “the below.”
“In a world constructed by the old gods,” Frey added. “Even most of the Irish Wolves don’t know about it. No way I’d ever have gotten to come here if I hadn’t married into the family secret.”
She regarded Astrid with a fond look, but her explanation confused me even more.
“The old gods?” I repeated. “How old? And how did they manage to…?”
I trailed off because I had no idea how to qualify the sight before me. I could feel and hear the swish of the grass underneath my feet, so it wasn’t a hologram. But something told me it also wasn’t real. In the end, I settled for “…make all of this?”
Astrid shrugged. “No idea. Truth is, I’m pretty much a tourist here, too. I grew up in Belfast, and that’s where Frey and I live when I’m not being called in to help with births and whatnot.”
“But you know, there is one person you could possibly ask,” Frey pointed out with a smirk. “He’s standing right beside you, my Nothing Queen.”
“What did you call her?” The faintly amused tone disappeared, and Sea whipped his head to squint at Frey.
“Oh, relax, Brother mine. It’s an inside joke your sister-in-law was calling back to, is all,” Astrid answered in the same tone of voice I used to needle Tara.
"What sort of inside joke?” Sea demanded to know.
“The type that stays between the three of us,” Astrid began to answer — only to break off and squint at a point beyond Sea in the far distance. “What’s that other brother of mine up to, then?”
I followed her gaze to a hill overlooking the town where Wild appeared to be…
Now it was my turn to squint. Was he chasing after a large black wolf? With something glinting in his hand?
"Appears Ronan didn't take the news well," Sea said, looking in the same direction. "Looks like he probably tried to sedate the lad, and Ronan shifted to get away."
Oh, God. My heart dropped. “Ronan was so upset that he’d rather become a mindless beast who could easily do irrevocable harm to one of his pack members than give up his claim?”
Astrid frowned. "Something like that. Should I go help…?"
